Categories: church, food for thought
One of the most profound paradigm shifts I’ve had over the past few years is my understanding of community, particularly the community of believers and individual communities of faith. It goes right along with the realization that the church really is the people, not the building with the steeple. (See, I made a rhyme! Do it all the time!)
Anyhow…ahem.
Categories: Sunday meditations
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” –Matt. 5:43-45, NASB
Categories: How I am, Meanderings (look it up), moments of truth, You need to read this
I’ve processed a lot of stuff here in the past couple of years, as I’ve transitioned out of institutional church into “something else” that I don’t know what to call it yet. This transition has been full of surprises; if someone had made me bet my life on predicting the stuff that has happened, I’d be dead now.
Categories: healing wounds, link love, women's issues
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything about women’s issues. It isn’t for a lack of passion about it, but in many ways it’s perhaps because I’ve said my piece…and the last few times I’ve posted about it, most of the comments were from other men who wanted to waste my time arguing theology, which tended to make the posts counter-productive. So mainly I’ve been focusing more on living out these convictions more than just talking about them.
Categories: How I am, things that don't fit in any category in particular
This weeks marks six months since I moved to Denver.
It would take a book to chronicle the many ways our lives have changed since moving here. In some ways, the changes in our attitude and approach began in Tulsa and led to our moving here. In other ways, coming here has been life-changing in its own way.
Categories: food for thought, link love
Over the past two evenings The Wild One and I watched the classic movie A Nun’s Story starring Audrey Hepburn–first time we’d seen it. (Long movie, so we broke it into two parts watching it from our DVR.) It was about a young woman, the daughter of a famous doctor, trained as a nurse, who entered the convent with a sincere desire to serve God and care for the underprivileged. We watched as throughout the nearly three-hour-long movie she stumbles over the legalistic rules of her order that stop her from making common sense decisions for the people she is treating–epitomized by the requirement that she must leave off treatment of a patient (no matter how severe) when the bell calls her to prayer and communion. Their explanation for such requirements? “Your medical service must be secondary to your religious life.” After years of suffering from inside politics and constantly finding herself guilty of breaking one rule while trying to keep another, she finally decides to renounce her vows and is shunned by the order. The thing is, she is the one who is acting most like Jesus throughout the film. It is a classic example of people missing the point, of not seeing the forest for the trees.
Categories: Sunday meditations
“It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.” –Gal. 5:1, NASB
In his letter to the Galatians, Paul was addressing an attempt of religious Jews to enforce the Law of Moses on the young Gentile Christians, including telling them they needed to be circumcised like the Jews. It wasn’t so much the act of circumcision that Paul was coming against–it was all the religious legalism that it represented. Paul was trying to reinforce the gospel of grace to these young believers.
Categories: What the heck was THAT?
Categories: food for thought, Meanderings (look it up)
Categories: food for thought, theological questions, Things I Should Probably Not Be Telling You
As a disclaimer/hat-tip, the thoughts I’m about to process began from some things I’m reading in Brian McClaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy. In one of the early chapters, he reflects on some of the issues and controversies raised by Jesus being referred to as the “Son of God”–including some of the concerns it raises in our culture about the presumed “male-“ness of God, or reinforcing the male-dominant theme many have taken from the Scripture–all of which could be debated and discussed into the ground as to what it actually means.